Lata
by storiewriter
Summary: One life ends, and another begins. Transcendence AU


The day after Bentley graduated from Magdolen University's Undergraduate program, Dipper went missing for several days. It didn't bother Bentley overly much, but the fact that Dipper left during Bentley's graduation party (and the free food and alcohol, not to mention the results of Dipper and Torako's prank) set off a slow, needling feeling that something wasn't right. It only built as Dipper did not show up to blip Bentley home for the summer, and it peaked as he stepped into his childhood room and found no sign of the Dipper.

When Bentley reached out along the bond he shared with Dipper, slow and tentative even after years of practicing this very motion, all he got from Dipper was rage and grief and unending sorrow. He opened his eyes and stared at the stars on his ceiling, then at the boxes littering his room. It wasn't really worth unpacking everything when he was moving abroad again in two months for grad school and work study.

Bentley reached out again, and sent reassurance for whatever it was that had Dipper so rattled. _I'm here_. Even as uneasiness gurgled in him, he tried to exude positivity. _I'm here_.

It was days before Bentley saw Dipper again.

He came back from a day out with Torako and her friends to find Dipper sitting at the kitchen table. He was small, twelve, dressed in an odd sleeveless jacket and worn shorts, and was paging through one of his worn scrapbooks. When Bentley reached his side and put a hand on the Dipper's shoulder, he saw the tall red-haired man featured prominently in the photo Dipper was stroking.

Dipper spoke minutes later, when Bentley's legs were starting to ache a bit. "Have I ever told you about Henry?"  
Bentley shifted. "A little. He was Mabel's husband, and your brother. Well, brother-in-law, technically."

Reaching out a leg, Dipper hooked his foot over the nearest chair and dragged it closer. Bentley sat down in the chair, worn from a lifetime of use, and shifted it to more fully face Dipper. He waited for Dipper to speak, even as Dipper flipped to the next page and took in all the old faces without seeming to pay Bentley any mind.

In the other room, his father gave a short shout of frustration, then seemed to fall silent. Bentley knew better though; he'd been around long enough to know that his dad was muttering curses under his breath as he went through snide messages.

"Henry was amazing." Dipper paused, then laughed, a blurbling noise that wasn't at all happy. His hair was shielding his eyes from view, but Bentley knew enough to know that they were tight and tired and grieving. "Of course he was, he was Mabel's. He put up with me, he accepted me, he called me brother. And then I fuck it all up, as usual."

Bentley swallowed, thought about what he wanted to say. Leaning over on the tabletop, he was struck by how much shorter Dipper actually was. "Sometimes, yeah, you fuck up, but you usually fuck up with good intentions. You know?"

Dipper laid a hand out against the pictures and the pages, claws dull nubs as to not tear the fragile material. He inhaled in such a way that had Bentley reach a hand out and place it on his shoulder again.

"…I ate his soul," Dipper said, a low, heavy murmur that had Bentley running the words over in his mind before the implications fully hit him. "I had to. But I _ate his soul_."

Old fear gripped him, edges dull but not so much that they did not cut. Bentley pulled in a breath through his nose and pushed it back out. He was fine. It was fine. They'd been doing exposure therapy for ages. It's not like he was seeing it. It wasn't like that time last year when Dipper had pulled himself and Torako in to save them, it wasn't like…

"Oh," he murmured. He smoothed down the creases he'd left in Dipper's tailcoat and took one of Dipper's hands. Dipper flinched, as if to withdraw, but didn't.

The kitchen still smelled like _panko_ and _katsu_ sauce, even though they'd had it last night and had cleaned up right away. The light was steady, and it shone down on the exposed pages of Dipper's scrapbook, illuminating the edges of the old photographs and glinting off of them.

Dipper then raised his hand, clasped around Bentley's, and pressed the knuckles to his forehead. He breathed, shaky, and Bentley felt his tears at the edges of his fingers.

He dragged the chair closer to Dipper, feet scraping against the linoleum, and leaned forward so that he was hugging Dipper. Bentley pressed his free hand to the back of Dipper's head and guided it to his shoulder the way he did Nadeshka's, on the rare visits to her house in Canada.

Dipper clutched at Bentley's shirt and inhaled, a rough sound somewhere between a whine and a gurgle. Bentley stroked Dipper's hair and let out a hush.

"Like I said," Bentley murmured, smelling the chai tea Dipper and Torako had favored for the past four years wafting off Dipper's hair. "You have good intentions."

He pushed his face into Bentley's shirt, the one he'd gotten last year in a sale at the campus store. Bentley still wasn't entirely certain that Torako and Dipper hadn't found a way to rig that.

Dipper breathed through the fabric and into his shoulder, hot the way that all open-mouth exhales are. "Henry was so _weak_ when he came back," he moaned. He let go of Bentley's hand to grip more of the shirt, and Bentley took the opportunity to pull Dipper onto his lap. "He was so _weak_ , he tried to come back _early_ and chose the wrong person and I didn't even _notice_."

Bentley pushed his knees up, and slowly let them drop. Dipper rubbed his nose against the MagU shirt, and Bentley slid his chin over Dipper's scalp. He let his throat lay against the side of his head, one pointed ear pressing against the tender skin there.

Once, he would have thought it would be so easy for Alcor to twist around and tear out his jugular. Demons liked human flesh, after all.

This time, he just sighed and tightened his arms around Dipper. "How long was he alive?"

Dipper sniffed and shifted so that his hands were clasped behind Bentley's back, jammed between his spine and the back of the chair. "…ten weeks."

Bentley hummed, and he felt Dipper relax at the sound. "Ten weeks isn't a long time. We'd been really busy too, and you were helping out by making sure rent was paid while Torako and I studied our asses off. I don't think I saw you pull out those scrapbooks once."

"I haven't even contacted anybody else, though," Dipper said, tensing, shoulders hunching over. One brushed against Bentley's throat, and he swallowed before humming again.

"Because they were all old fogeys who were too set in their ways. You said you saw nothing but strife those ways. Strife and syrupy pancakes in the face."

Dipper laughed, but turned somber again almost immediately. "There was Grenda, though. And Wendy, and Ford. They were—they were young enough."

"Ford was growing up halfway around the world with strict parents," Bentley murmured. "Wendy was surrounded by anti-demon bull, and Grenda…you kept waiting on Grenda. I don't know what to say there."

Dipper did that odd shrugging thing with his shoulders. Bentley couldn't imagine that it was more practical than tipping your head. "I dunno," he said, in that same tone that meant he was hating himself.

Bentley huffed, the scent of chai and _panko_ mixing in his nose, and stood. Dipper yelped and clung to him. "What are you doing?"

"Turnabout's fair play," he warned, and then he was spinning in circles. The kitchen was a blur of white and green and copper, mixing with the light brown of the table and the black of their old fridge, Dipper was screaming and clinging to Bentley's chest.

It wasn't long, however, before he started laughing. It was one of those high-pitched giggles that sounded more like a cackle than was right, but it was exactly what Bentley wanted to hear. He slowed to a stop, head aching as he stopped spinning. Dipper hung off his shoulders, knees draped over Bentley's hands.

He looked up at Bentley, the echo of a smile on his face. He already looked just a bit older, felt just a bit lighter when Bentley focused on their link. "I still fucked up," he said.

"That's the thing about reincarnations," Bentley said, setting Dipper down on the ground as the other started to slowly grow. "They give you hundreds of second chances. Just don't miss the next one."

Dipper looked at his eyes, yellow pupils shifting between Bentley's, then stepped forward and pressed his forehead to Bentley's. He was already just tall enough to do so.

"Thank you," he said. "I—what would I do without you?"

"Make your own friends, you dumbass," Bentley lilted, pushing his nose against Dipper's and closing his eyes.

Dipper snorted. "Torako's rubbed off on you too much."

Bentley opened his eyes and laughed in Dipper's face. Dipper pulled away with a grumble as Bentley ruffled his hair. "Says you, the one who conspired with her to make every single drink at graduation as alcoholic as possible."

"Not like you weren't legal!" He protested, batting Bentley's hand away. He was still overly-careful, Bentley noticed. He thought of Torako screaming and blood on the floor, but the memory was dim enough and the accident innocent enough that he put it out of mind.

"It was _helium beer_ ," Bentley deadpanned. "The President gave a toast and started to speak and _nobody could stop laughing_."

Dipper grinned, all sharp teeth and now he was taller than Bentley again. "It was hilarious, you have to admit that."

"Yeah, it was," Bentley said. He looked at Dipper, now grown again, suit a tiny bit shabby but mostly in place, and he thought, _Mission Accomplished_.

* * *

Five weeks later, Bentley was sprawled all over Torako as she went over the pros and cons of taking a year off to do some practical Demonology stuff—her parents were in the other room, so she left out the fact that she was literally going to be tracking down cults that had established themselves throughout Canada, the States, and the United Republic of Mexico, but they'd had the talk enough times to know what she was planning.

"I can always come with you," Bentley offered. "I know that song and dance."

"Nah, you've got another super awesome scholarship that you accepted already! You can't just take a year off! Besides, you're right in the middle again, I can just crash at yours when I'm in the area."

Bentley turned and pushed his forehead against her shoulder. "I just worry," he said into her skin. She shook underneath him with laughter.

"Nah, I told you, I'd call and have Tyrone fish me out if I dove too deep." She ruffled his hair with her free hand.

He snorted and shifted so that he was more or less on his elbows. She raised her eyebrow at him. "We know you, idiot. You don't ask for help easily."

"That's like an octopus calling a jellyfish soft-bellied," Torako said. She got that gleam in her eye, but he wasn't able to draw back in time before she bapped him in the nose.

"Stop that!" He whined, wrinkling his nose and glaring at her. She just guffawed and pulled him back on top of her, his nose colliding with her neck and pressing uncomfortably.

"But seriously," Torako said. "I'll call. I promise."

"And you'll call _me_ every night, or every other night if you feel like texting, to let me know you're fine." Bentley propped his chin up on her collarbone and patted her cheek.

She looked down at him, a wry grin tugging at the corner of her mouth, and the sudden swell of her chest under him signaled that she was ready to speak, and—

" _Oh my stars Bentley come here come here you've got to see this_."

"Al—Tyrone!" Torako hissed, glancing at the open door. Nobody seemed to have heard, but Bentley rolled off of the bed and dragged Dipper down on the side furthest from the door. He was actually vibrating, and his eyes were wide and pupils dilated and Bentley took a good sniff.

"Doesn't smell like Yggdrasil," Bentley murmured, glancing over at the door. Torako had joined them on the side of the bed, trying to arrange her body as casually as possible as to block the view from the door.

"Are you _high_ , idiot?" Torako said, jabbing a finger in Alcor's face. He went cross-eyed looking at it, then tilted his head up to look Torako in the face.

"No. Yes? Maybe. If high off _happiness_ is what you're talking about!" Dipper folded his arms and set them on Torako's lap, looking up at her in thoughtfulness. Bentley was dragged forward, fist still caught in the front of Dipper's shirt, and he didn't like how Dipper's wings were twitching.

"Oh my god you're nuts," Torako deadpanned, still in a whisper. "You snapped. You snapped for real. Bentley oh no I think he's dangerous now he's high off _happiness_."

Dipper, usually, would have made some snarky comment in reply, but he just beamed as though he'd seen the way to Nirvana and was ready to bring some people with him. "Yes. Yes, I think you would like him. Her. They. Not sure yet. Gender's funny that way."

"What the fuck?" Torako asked, and Bentley would have said it if she didn't. Dipper simply grinned in response, and there was a sensation not unlike falling down one of those thriller rides and they weren't in Torako's room anymore.

Torako's room wasn't painted in neutral blues and pinks and greens. It also did not have medical equipment, and most important of all it did not have a baby-sizes sleep-pod floating in the center of it.

"What the _fuck_?" Torako screeched, and Dipper snapped his fingers absentmindedly, staring at the pod in the center of the small room. Bentley resisted the urge at sinking down to the floor and shaking his head. He'd gotten quite good at that.

" _Bentley_ , they're she's he's a _Pines_ ," Dipper babbled, tugging him forward and spinning midair. Bentley mouthed _Pines_ , foreign and clumsy around his lips, and let himself be pulled a couple steps closer to the pod.

In it was a baby, swaddled in lilac, tiny hands curled around thin air. Their eyes were open, and they watched Dipper and Bentley approach, a bit vapid and curious. Bentley knew that babies saw nothing more than blurs, simple colors and fuzzy shapes, but their vivid green eyes were wide and sharp.

"Pines? Like, your Pines original Pines?" Bentley placed a couple fingers on the thin shield protecting the baby, and the field fizzed and rippled under his skin.

Dipper whined. "Noo, that's the icing but—oh this is too much just here."

He placed his hands on Bentley's back and something passed through him, like the sensation of walking through a store's temperature field, and the space between origin and destination when tessering. Bentley blinked, and nothing happened.

"What was that supposed to do?" Bentley pulled his hand off the shield, and the fizzing sensation lingered a few moments, dancing itself into nonexistence.

Torako huffed and leaned against the back wall. "Isn't somebody supposed to be able to see us? It's a child ward, somebody's _got_ to be alerted."

Dipper kicked his legs from where he was floating midair. Bentley stared. Was this—was this actually a _tantrum_? Did he do that when he was off dipnip? After a few seconds, Dipper let out an exasperated moan. "Look! Just look it's—it's _him_!"

Bentley turned to the baby, rolling his eyes as he did so. He scanned the child's body, their legs pushing at the blanket piled down at the bottom of the crib, the way their fingers, somewhere between white and milk-tea, wrung together. They yanked one of their hands up by their head, and he looked there too. Same pudgy face, green eyes, and the same patch of—

"Oh," he said, suddenly understanding. "Oh."

Blooming from the tiny swatch of thin black hair on her head were two tiny antlers, small and straight and daggerlike. He could see tiny bramble, young and as green as her eyes, beginning to curl around the base and reach up the antlers' short lengths. They hadn't been there when he'd looked before.

"What's oh?" Torako asked, leaning over them to look at the child below. "I get this is a cool baby and all, but what the hell Dipper?"

Bentley looked up from the tiny antlers to make contact with Alcor's eyes, the gold dominating the sclera. He reached for the bond, and could feel the hope, the joy, the fear and the longing thrumming there.

"It's Henry," Bentley told Torako. "It's finally Henry. A Henry Pines."

Dipper laughed a way he'd never heard before. It was like he'd laughed when Torako succumbed to a tickle attack, but lighter and louder and _more_. "Lata," he said—no, crooned, pressing his face to the barrier protecting Henry from the outside world. His hands slid up the side of it, and Bentley wrapped his arm around Dipper, then Torako. The baby started gumming at their fist, staring at Bentley with eyes that he imagined reflected the slow, aching familiarity in his chest.

"Lata Pines."


End file.
